The art of leadership

Former Lieutenant Colonel David Goodacre OBE, now Transformation Director at Barclays Bank, talks to founder and psychotherapist Pip Richardson.

First up I couldn’t help but comment on the letters after David’s name, wondering what they were for and what they meant to him. His response? “Slightly embarrassing, but yeah.”

David turned his eyes down and looked away, revealing his genuine embarrassment. I warmed to his authenticity and humility immediately. “The joke in the military” David quipped, “was that MBE is for My Best Efforts and OBE is Other Buggers' Efforts.”

David quickly and deftly draws comparisons between leading in the military vs “Civilian Street” as he calls it.

“The big thing I find in Civilian Street is how manage and lead are used interchangeably when to me they're really different things. You manage things, you lead people. Management is a science, leadership is an art. Management is going through processes: appraisals, managing sick leave, as opposed to looking after your people and getting them to do the extraordinary - that’s the leading.

The military context of leadership is servant leadership. The Sandhurst motto is “Serve to lead”. That's based around the idea that in order to lead you, I must serve you. It's not a case of being a popularity contest or doing what you want. It's about trying to serve your needs so you can serve the needs of the mission. It's not the officers or the senior people that deliver on the ground, it's the soldiers that deliver.

My role is to lead the team and remove blockers and allow them to do what they need to do, because that's what they're there for. So it's taking the pyramid and turning it upside down. I put myself at the bottom of the triangle not the top. My job is to support all of those who work to me, rather than for me. To give what they need.

Pip: “I was literally just thinking about want versus need over my lunch, that some teams and people know what they want, but they don’t perhaps know what they need. Same in therapy. The need is often unconscious; we’re not aware of it, probably as we’ve never had the thing we need. How do you experience that as a leader?”

“You manage things. You lead people.”

I've worked with good soldiers, bad soldiers, lazy soldiers and everything along the way. Some will want to take the easy option. It's human nature to an extent. And yet sometimes the thing they actually need is to be made to engage. So it's getting people that don't necessarily want to engage to engage and be part of it. To do this effectively you have to know them.

Did you say your last magazine was about love? Was that love in business?” David asks me. “Actually,” I tell him “love in business was my first ever issue.”

“I smiled” David says, “because one of my favourite quotes is from a gentleman called Sydney Jary MC. When I spoke to the bank's expert engineer program, a group of young engineers who are coming into the business who they asked me to talk to about leadership, I started by saying, I'm here to talk about love. And all their faces were really confused.

Jary was a platoon commander [a leader of 30 people] from D-Day to the end of the war. He is, I think, the only one who led his platoon the whole way through. He said that “Sound leadership, like true love, to which I suspect it is closely related, is all-powerful. It can overcome the seemingly impossible and its effect on both leader and lead is profound and lasting.”

I agreed with David, especially when you think of love as understanding someone, not just care or protection, I offered. Yeah, you've got to care for them but it's about doing the best thing for them, which might not always be the thing they want, but it might be what they need. Little things; hearing, listening to their view. I used to bring in my officers to help me plan so they were part of it and it was their plan too; it also helped with their education and development.

“To lead people properly you've got to get to know what makes them tick. You need to know what they need to motivate them.”

To lead people properly you've got to get to know what makes them tick. You need to know what they need to motivate them. Some people need a kick up the backside. Some people need constant reassurance that they're doing a good job.

Others, who are really self-confident, don't need that. So knowing your team as individuals allows you to motivate them and get them to do their best. That's the real challenge and, I think, where people slip into management rather than leading.

In 1953 Field Marshall Sir William Slim spoke to the US Military Academy, West Point and famously said “Know the bolts and nuts of your job, but above all know your men. When you command a platoon, you ought to know each man in it better than his own mother does. You must know which man responds to encouragement, which to reasoning, and which needs a good kick in the pants. Know your men.”

It’s about knowing what they're going through at home, having that open relationship. I've worked with people outside the army where they never open up. You never really get to know them. They never ask about you. So it's purely a work relationship. It makes it hard to understand what they think or feel.

It’s a challenge to lead [rather than just manage] someone when you're thousands of miles away and you've never been for a beer with them. I know it sounds crass but getting to know them on a social level... I could achieve more in an hour in the pub, building a bond. You get good teams who get on, but it's not the same. And that's the real challenge. Bonding people as a team is much, much more difficult. We [the Army] put so much effort into bonding the team first. What's going to make people lean in and “fight” together for a corporate identity in the same way they will for another one? It's knowing how to bring that all together - the mission, purpose-led business. It’s getting the team of teams behind one purpose or vision.

A good example of this is when during a visit to the NASA Space Centre in 1962, President Kennedy noticed a janitor carrying a broom. He interrupted his tour, walked over to the man and said: “Hi, I’m Jack Kennedy, what are you doing?” The janitor replied: “I’m helping put a man on the moon, Mr President.”

In the corporate world, law firms, banks, accountancy firms, how do you bond your team to want to get behind it? I think they need to see it as a values based organisation where we're doing good. I think people inherently are good and want to be part of something worthwhile.

Leadership is a relationship between people. As in every relationship, leaders make mistakes. But you learn from them and get better, keep developing. Leading is constant learning. A good leader will never stop learning. So I still read books, listen to podcasts, I read your articles because I want to know where am I getting it wrong? There's always new elements you can learn about yourself. Self-awareness is invaluable in leadership.

“You must know your men better than their mom does.”

We turn to leading at scale...

“Six to eight is about right. Apparently according to research it's a size of a group where you can have good, strong relationships. So as a young platoon commander, my first job, you have a command of 30 people, roughly. I can’t get to know them all in as greater detail as I might want to, so I rely on the next level down, section commanders, to know their eight people.

Pip: So what do you think about hierarchy?

“I think hierarchies work well if done properly, in that I'm there to support everyone who reports into me. Not from the point of view of do as I say. When the leaders start going into the engine room to do the work, they get in the way of the people trying to deliver. It also means no one's on the bridge looking where you're going.

It works when allowing people to elevate a problem, a risk, and it becomes someone else's problem rather than the pressure being on that individual. Every level is there to make life better for those underneath them, not the other way around. My job is to remove blockers. If the hierarchy is the blocker then you've got it wrong.

Pip: Does applying more pressure actually make people succeed more?

“Probably not. I often reflect on Adair’s action centred leadership model - Team task individual: you've got to find the balance, know when to put which first and then rebalance later. Sometimes we just expect too much. We don't give the resources, we set KPIs, and they can't ever achieve it. The leader has got to understand what the people need and remove the pressure. A leader should be doing everything you can to help those who are on the ground - using your experience to preempt what they need, provide advice and guidance, anything they need to help them.

Pip: So ultimately, what kind of leader are you?

“Whatever type's required at that point in time by those individuals or teams. The Army's definition is a combination of character, knowledge and action that inspires others to succeed. The leader should set the vision, the values, the standards, and then demonstrate them. Integrity is absolutely key. Ultimately, I try to be the person or leader my team need me to be.

Leadership is hard. It's constant. It can be developed but you have to want to lead and can't play at it part time. Do it all the time or get out the way and let someone else do it. Because you can't fake it.”